Towards a theory of local governance and public goods provision in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper presents findings on multi-country research designed to shed light on the institutional sources of variation in public goods’ provision at the sub-national level. It focuses on key bottlenecks to improvement in maternal mortality, water and sanitation, facilitation of markets and enterprise, and public order and security.
Three clusters of issues and associated explanatory variables are identified, which seem to account for much of the variation in outcomes. These include:
- The degree to which ‘the policy-driven components of the institutional framework of public goods’ provision reflect a coherent vision, so that resources are allocated and incentives are structured in ways that are mutually reinforcing, not mutually undermining;
- The human-resource components of provision are subject to effective top-down performance disciplines, even if in other respects the organisational context is severely lacking in the attributes of a well-resourced and well regulated bureaucracy;
- And there are institutions enabling local collective action which are locally anchored, in a double sense – the rules they incorporate are welfare-enhancing (problem-solving) in the context, and they make use of institutional elements inherited from the past which motivate, enable and guide individuals to take particular actions’ (pp.4-5).
Other variables include the incidence of on-the-campaign-trail, populist policy-making by national politicians, and the degree to which aid generates the negative incentive effects identified in the literature.

Summary